The Ordinary (30 page)

At dinner, Malin could hardly take her eyes off Jedda, dressed in her elaborate robes and crusted with so many gems she glittered, sitting haughtily in her chair among Zhae'Van's courtiers and representatives from the government. Malin was there as much to represent the college of Prin as because of her own rank, and these days, house rank was of less importance anyway, outside the social sphere. This being a state dinner, the guests changed chairs after each course, and she should have been paying attention to her seat partners, many of whom had their bits of business to discuss. She watched Jedda when she should have been listening, she nodded politely when she should have been responding. She knew what was happening to herself, she could see it clearly with her Prin training; the coming of such an emotion is a very tangible event. But she made no move to divert its course, to change the emotion, to struggle with it. Here was a woman whom Malin would have to know. The thought made her quite happy, warm in the center of her stomach.

Zhae'Van herself made no appearance at the dinner; she was not for the sight of Erejhen mortals. She had been asleep for some days and would sleep for some days more. Meantime her attendants amused themselves speculating about Jedda's identity; she was playing the attitude of an Erejhen High House quite well, though parts of her costume hinted that she was of Svyssn origin. Malin figured all of these to be guises.

She knew how she wanted the evening to end, and the rain made it quite natural for her to offer to take Jedda to her quarters, which turned out to be in the Twelve-Tower, a couple of floors above Father's apartments. For Malin, it had been a long time since she touched anyone, maybe longer than Jedda had been alive. But once they touched, the years fell away from them both.

At one point, near morning, Jedda said, sweaty-faced, hair plastered to her forehead, “I feel like a teenager.” She used the word for a person of sixteen, the traditional age at which an Erejhen child became an adult. Her accent was rich, and made her speech beautifully musical, like no people in Irion that Malin could recall.

“I'm glad you're not one,” Malin said. “Remarkable, to feel so much, after one night.”

“Do you feel so much?”

“It's plain enough I do.”

“Thank you for saying so.”

“For someone as old as I am, it's a treasure you can't even imagine.” She leaned over Jedda in the low bed, on her arms, to ask the question she had been dreading. “How long will I have to wait to see you again?”

“I don't know. A very long time, I think.”

Her heart felt like a stone. She needed to stand, to walk about a bit, and get her breath, and so she did, the air currents like soft cloth along her bare skin. “We shouldn't talk anymore about it, then,” she said, when she could breathe again.

“Are you leaving?”

“Not till morning.” She looked back to Jedda, tangled in the bedclothes. Soft brown skin so creamy and fine, dark against the sheets. Such a child, and yet at the core, not a child in any way.

“I'm glad,” Jedda said.

So they stayed together to the last second, and Malin learned the truth about Jedda, without anyone telling her, that Jedda came from the other world, the one Uncle Jessex had visited, the reason for the gate. She followed Jedda to the tower when Uncle decided to send Jedda home, allowing Malin to be there only to bind her, paralyze her, and break her heart in the end, by sending Jedda away. By then, Malin understood just how long a time Jedda meant.

For a moment, in that room in the center of Uncle's storm, she felt as if it would take all the energy she had simply to move one step without crumbling. Uncle was watching. “I'm sorry,” he said.

“Who is she?”

“I think you know who she is, as far as you're concerned.” He gave her a level, calm gaze that made her want to scream.

“I want to know who she is, as far as you're concerned.”

His jaw set in a hard line, and his eyes went to flint.

“Tell me,” she said.

He turned from her sharply. “There's only one way you'll find that out, my dear. By breaking the seal on your copy of the book.”

She was taking deep breaths. “Why can't you tell me?”

“Because when you meet her again, you'll be facing one of the hardest tests you're ever likely to face. You want me to give you riddles and hints? I can't give you more. You'll have an enormous decision to make, and no more time to wait. But she'll be there, then, to help you.”

“Will she?”

He gripped her arms in his hands and pulled her to face him. She was taller than he, a fact that always gave her a twinge of satisfaction. He looked at her fervently. “Yes, she'll be there. That's all I want to tell you. Is it enough?”

She shook out her hair in the wind, ran a hand through it. A hint of Jedda's scent still in Malin's hair, on the palms of her hands. “There's more in the King's book? She's in there, too?”

After a long moment, in which he might have been doing almost anything, he nodded. “Yes. She's part of all this.”

She was stunned, grateful for the rising wind that made speech impossible! His face had a shocked, weary expression as well, as if he had been a long time without rest; though if she said anything to him, he would simply remind her that it was his business to do without rest as long as necessary. He stretched the flesh to its limits. This was her thought, eerily echoed in his words when he said, “Something's changing in me. I was able to speak about it to your friend. Now I need to tell you.”

“What?”

He took a long time to find the words. “I'm afraid I'm ill. I'll need to withdraw from contact with people. You won't see me for a long time after this. I'll announce to the Yneset and to the rest of the country that I'm removing myself to Cunevadrim, and I plan to shut myself up there.”

He spoke simply and plainly, without much emotion, but the words brought a chill to them both, and for a moment she forgot the storm, even forgot Jedda. “The sickness that comes to immortals,” she said.

“Yes.” He met her eye for a moment, then moved away to one of the windows, opening the shutters, standing there in the wind and rain.

“Can't you stay here?” she asked. “Why go to that house? You know you don't like it.”

“I can't close this house, it's part of the College. You'll have to keep an eye on this place yourself. I'll leave a bit of myself behind, but hidden, and I'd ask that you should not seek me out here, and not at Cunevadrim, either.”

“I don't understand.”

“I have to do a dangerous thing. I have to learn Eldrune, and the libraries are there. Partly to make the gate and partly to protect us all once it's open.”

“Why?”

“Eldrune is about time running backward, my dear. I don't know how to do that, and I need to. But it's dangerous, I won't pretend it isn't.”

“You never mentioned any need to protect us before.”

He gave her a warning look. “I'm telling you now. There are other places in this universe where beings like me, like us, exist, Malin. Once we open the gate completely, they'll know we're here.”

So much sound poured into her from all sides now, the storm reaching a peak, a singing in the hollow of the kirilidur, the wind ringing along the stones. She drank it as if it were of her own making, reaching out, here and there, to sense what she could of his engine. “So you think she hid us here because of that. YY-Mother hid us here, to keep us safe.”

He looked as if he were going to disagree with her, but said, “To keep us safe until we were ready. To keep us safe until someone like me came along, and made something like the Prin college and the rest of the Oregal.”

“Why?”

“If I knew that, I'd know what she is.” He shook his head. “There's more, of course. When I link us permanently to Senal, the world outside, the length of our year will shift. There'll be a bit of chaos, and I won't be here to help you.”

She paled. “To help me?”

“Who else?” he asked. “You'll have to do what I do. You'll have to rule. And the Prinam will have to do what it was designed to do, to help you rule.”

She shook her head, suddenly furious. Jedda gone, and now all this rushing at her like a storm. “It's too much, just this moment,” she said.

“There's no time,” he answered. “I know you. You'll have to leave, after this, and the next time you think to come here, I'll already be gone.”

She was trembling in the rain, doing nothing at all to defend herself from it, not even by reflex. “Then what more is there?”

He waited awhile to answer. He was singing in a low voice, and suddenly she was dry and warm and all the shutters were swinging closed over all the windows. The room became still and quiet and filled with a warm light, the storm out of sight. “Nothing, really. If you've heard me.”

“I've heard you.”

“I'm sorry.”

“It's time to go, then,” she said, looking at him. “Do you have any idea how long it will be?”

He thought she meant till she saw him again. He answered, “You'll find me sooner than you expect, though not here. I'll send for you.”

Her heart failed her and she never asked the real question. Where to find the answer, she already knew. Now she had a reason to read the King's book, if she was brave enough to do it and could find a way to open the seal. She stood there while Uncle puttered at one of his tables. “You gave her a good ring, didn't you?” Malin asked.

“Yes. She'll be fine.”

Was she in danger then? Jedda? “I'm ready to go, you can send me whenever you like.”

He nodded very gravely, then watched her for a long moment. “Take care of yourself,” he said, and then he was gone and she was in her rooms in the Twelve-Tower.

She summoned Erinthal, who waddled into the chamber, took one look at her, paled, and took her seriously for once. All the unpacking had to be repacked. All the party had to be roused and found. Malin was leaving Inniscaudra at once, headed for her house in Montajhena.

She paid a courtesy call to Zhae'Van before riding away with Erinthal and the rest of her party. The Great Empress of the Tervan was still sleeping, so Malin sipped a cup of tea in the Empress's parlor and talked about the weather with one of her attendants. Ral of House Rojan would give the Great Empress Malin's compliments and express her sorrow at leaving without standing in the light of the Eldest. There were ranges of Tervan apartments in the lower part of the house, behind Thenduril and descending into the rock of the hill. These might be Zhae'Van's rooms by custom, for all Malin knew. She left a visit token stamped for her house and said her polite good-byes.

By the time she reached Montajhena, a few weeks later, every news-teller in the city was reporting that the wizard Irion had changed the sky, and the city itself was in an uproar, with sky clubs staying up through the night to watch the stars, which for the first time in history reappeared night after night in the same configurations. People were avid to count them and name them, some equipped with spyglasses or telescopes of varying degrees of sophistication. Malin realized, with a start, that this enormous event had taken place while she was traveling, and she had never noticed.

The early euphoria passed to unease, since now the sky only varied in incremental ways. Night after night the same stars appeared and moved across the sky. A white moon went through phases from sickle to full and then back again, and no red moon ever appeared, or ever would again, according to the news-tellers, who were listening to Uncle's Sky Council, as it oversaw an orderly transition to a new calendar of fewer days, new names, months that all had the same number of days in them and none of them the same number as the old months. People grumbled about the changes and some, obstinately, withdrew from the innovations and followed the old calendar as if it were a religion.

More shocking than the sudden change to the sky and the rumors that the seasons would all be shorter was the news that Irion was withdrawing from his house in Arthen and would reside in seclusion in Cunevadrim. His progress was detailed in the news-tellings and in pamphlets, some of them by his opponents in the Yneset, which most people were starting to call simply the Nesset. His movements brought no surprise to Malin, since he had written her several letters regarding his plans.

The world, shaken with so much change, reacted uncomfortably and uneasily. Why would Irion go to live in a place with so many bad memories in its history? Why would he curse the poor people with a new sky and leave them to live under it night after night, with its wheels and wheels of stars in such numbers that a sane man would weep for the need to count them all? What was wrong with the old sky, after all?

Nothing good ever came out of Cunevadrim; why would Irion go there?

The Nesset and the Prin councils turned to Malin for guidance. She sighed, and gave it, and felt somewhat pleased when no one quarreled with her. She met with a delegation of tellers and answered their questions about what was being called the Absence. By then she had taken up residence at Shurhala, the new palace in the mountain in Montajhena, and had begun to increase the size of her staff, drawing on Uncle's treasuries to do so. She began to keep court like a queen, mindful of how badly she had bungled her first time on a throne, after her parents crossed the mountains. Erinthal now wore the insignia of the Marshall of the Ordinary, the title of the royal servant of highest rank in the old King's court. Malin made no fuss about the change and explained it to no one. From Cunevadrim, not a word.

After the euphoria over the new sky came unrest, the year shorter, the seasons shorter, the winter cold and sharp, summer hot but brief. The climate changed and rivers shifted course. A long era of civil disorder followed, with Malin and the Prin barely holding the country together. She lived through the Sky Rebellions and gradually prospered. The effort ate years, but years she had. She lost herself in the work for a long time.